princess carrion
by marapozsa
Summary: Ashe/Rasler. Pre-game. She has always, always done what she has to do...for her kingdom, and for her own peace of mind.


**PRINCESS CARRION.**

by aethere.

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**A/N:** A little depressing something I did after watching the beginning of the game again. Set pre-game, character deaths, all such things. It came out decent, I guess, for a single night's work.

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The moment Ashe realizes Rasler is dead, she knows what it will mean.

She knows that Rasler is the one thing that keeps the gate shut; the one thing that not only keeps the phantoms from her dreams, but the true monsters from the streets of her cities and her lands, who would rather conquer her people than make peace with them, and who would rather kill her than let her be their puppet. Ruthless, bloody, and merciless, it is against the Archadians that Rasler makes war - not for Nabradia's sake, because it will have been the first to fall, but because Ashe asks him to, and because he knows that she knows that there is little to no chance of their winning. He knows, too, that despite this he will go anyway, because Ashe loves him, and this somehow makes it alright for him to die in battle where if he surrendered, he might die in her arms. The two are the same in that either way, he will die, and he will die with her first and foremost in his mind, as he never was in hers.

Regardless, Ashe still cries.

-

At Rasler's funeral, it is not just for him that Ashe grieves. Ashe, with her tight small lips in a straight line to match the furrow in her forehead, knows that Rasler - not her father, not her brothers, and certainly never her - was the key to a good future for her kingdom. Ashe gazes down on Rasler's closed eyes and serene expression and sees not the man she had once loved with only the one half of her heart, but someone she should forget, because remembering will not make it any easier for her to do what she must do.

-

Ever since she was young, Ashe has always been her father's favorite.

Ashe knows her father's mind - the son in a woman's body, with the iron will and the strong arm of her brothers, and the cunning and wit of her mother, and also too her father's own harsh, unyielding gaze that he meets for one last time before he goes. Those in the streets whose brothers and fathers lie in distant battlefields...they, who have skirted the path of desolation and seen only the possibility that it might end, cry for mercy from their gods and from Galtea; the king, mighty that he is, cries only for mercy from men like him, who will not give it. They will end it, they will end it all, so that he never regrets taking his daughter's advice and leaving for Nalbina without looking back, so that he does not have to look down to see the blade in his chest, which has always been there but has never yet been forced in this deep before.

They will sink it deep down into his flesh so it turns his flesh to powder and his blood to dirt; they, too, will ensure it is never removed.

The king's only regret is that his daughter will never yet live to see what fruit his sacrifice brings.

They will not let her live.

If they do, she will kill herself rather than suffer the humiliation, and then all will have been for nothing, as it always was.

-

Ashe knows what her father is thinking. Ashe knows that her father thinks that she will not let them make her their puppet.

Ashe knows, too, that he is absolutely right.

(If she has a choice, then she would rather pick death over servitude - a royal to the end.)

-

It is without deliberation that Ashe makes her move. Immediately, she summons a girl off the streets - this girl, a dancer, a prostitute with eyes hollowed out by drugs, and a womb of child barely grown, who stands before her as regal as the queen Ashe may never be, and who boasts the same looks. Hopefully they will not look closely and notice that her blonde locks are not natural, or that her eyes are not blue-grey but vibrant green, or that she does not have a scar on her left thigh procured from a swordfight with her seventh brother at the age of eight.

(_There could be better resemblances_, she thinks to herself as she looks at the one chosen, _but there is not enough time to find another._)

Without hesitation, but also without words, Ashe takes a seat across from this strong, independent woman living in squalor, and asks her to die by simply gesturing to the pretty golden cup in front of her.

"Drink," she commands without elaborating.

Either way, the girl suspects.

"Why?"

She peers into the cup but sees only her own reflection - so strongly dissatisfying that she looks away almost immediately.

"Because I am the daughter of the man who died advocating peace."

_Because you will die in my place, you poor, pitiless thing, from self-inflicted poison, and you will never know your corpse has been put to such use until you realize how ill-befitting your grave is to your station._

(That is what Ashe would rather say...but she knows that if she did, the silly girl would never drink then.)

Her enigmatic statement - and the menacing presence of guards, including Vossler, in the room - is enough persuasion. Yet Ashe cannot resist looking away as the girl downs the potent draught, and falls to the ground so the cup, like the princess herself, spills a little red onto the table cloth; and then is perched so precariously on the edge, it's no surprise that it takes it such a long time to clatter to the ground.

Silence takes over quickly after the deed is done.

-

To escape, she takes the waterways. No one who knows her would think that she'd be above entering those dirty, bacteria-infested waters if it meant keeping her life. Fortunately, it is Archadians who are chasing her, not her own blood and kin, and even more fortunately, the servants adore her - she knows, and lets them give their lives so that she can keep her own, as they dissuade the Archadians from following her, and mislead them as only Dalmascans can.

(The desert's other name is treachery.)

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Undertown.

Ashe sees, upon arrival, that it deserves its name, and pities its residents as easily as she does herself - that is to say, not at all, because she knows by now that there are enough people in Undertown to overcome all the Archadians.

One Dalamascan is worth twenty Archadians - at least.

-

In hiding, Ashe seeks comfort in the only thing she has ever really known: violence. Swinging a javelin in her cramped quarters brings no relief; she yearns to be out there, by Vossler's side, fighting the people who are responsible for who she is, and for what she has done, and for the people she no longer remembers as anything but vague profiles in the rippling black of her mind.

At least, that's what she tells Vossler.

-

"I've already taken the lives of three. Let me bear a sword and take more, to do what you have done and keep Dalmasca alive. Let me do it without having to sacrifice my pride and plead that having my father's blood does not make me any different from my subjects, and plead that being a woman does not make me weak, but strong. Vossler, please, just let me fight," Ashe demands, not knowing that she is already pleading.

Vossler smiles, grim and taut like the muscles he stopped boasting of years ago.

(They, too, speak of death.)

"Tell me, princess," he replies, "then who is it that you have slain?"

She looks him straight in the eye, cool and without remorse, and replies swiftly, "My father, my husband - and myself."

(_Oh, princess_, he thinks, aggrieved. _You do not know how right you are._)

-

In truth, it is not for the ones she loves that Ashe yearns to fight, and to kill, and to die.

She unsheathes her sword in the face of her enemy because it will erase her; and if she takes enough blows, then perhaps she will simply cease to be.

It is the only thing for her now.

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**A/N:** Thanks to Zaa (whose screenname is fairly hard for me to remember, so that's a shortened version) for being an awesome reviewer. Sometimes I just feel like posting something new to see if you like it, because that's how awesome your comments make me feel. And also to Meii, because you're the first one to read. Always. Unless you're not on and I get impatient, in which case, you're second-ish. Sometimes third.


End file.
